 |
Emily C. Rose’s Portraits of Our Past is
a meticulously painted canvas of life in the 18th and 19th
centuries for southwestern Germany’s rural Jews. A student
of European history, Ms. Rose began her research in 1994
out of curiosity about her own family’s beginnings. She
does an impressive and scholarly job of assembling
original sources using remarkably preserved records from
both German and Jewish archives of small towns and
villages. She expands a narrowly focused family history
into an interesting record of a resourceful and resilient
people who make lives, create families and build
communities in spite of constant discriminatory practices,
malice and capriciousness of the churches and the ruling
princes. |